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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29601096">The Doctor's Song</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanWritesStuff/pseuds/RyanWritesStuff'>RyanWritesStuff</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Dark, Gen, Sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:21:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29601096</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanWritesStuff/pseuds/RyanWritesStuff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A complete drabble with absolutely no context whatsoever for those who don't know my own Whoniverse (and like two people know it so that's everyone) of a far-future Doctor reminiscing before their final days.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Doctor's Song</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Selika?”</p><p> </p><p>The voice was smooth, quiet, and accented by millennia of age, age most keenly felt by the harshest of circumstances. There was a pleading note to it, one that the voice’s owner was most unaccustomed to using despite the veritable mass of voices that they had used over their countless lives.</p><p>It took intensity, stress and peril beyond imagining to put constant and consistent lines upon the ever-shifting face of a Time Lord of Gallifrey, and the Doctor had lines to spare.</p><p> </p><p>“Could you…play it, Selika?”</p><p>“…even now, Doctor?”</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>“I don’t think-”</p><p>“<em>Please</em>, Selika.”</p><p> </p><p>They were accustomed to pleading over their long life, but rarely for their own comfort. They had pleaded for the lives of others, for the safety of worlds and planets, even galaxies. Now, however, was a time for such comfort. Now was a time when, even briefly, they could put aside thoughts of selfishness and plead for one last moment that they could relish.</p><p> </p><p>“I need you to…not feel that way, Doctor. They all need you to stand firm.”</p><p>“I understand that, I know…I just want to hear it. One last time.”</p><p> </p><p>Due to the dead, and all that.</p><p> </p><p>“One more time before it all goes away.”</p><p> </p><p>The Gallifreyan nodded her head. She did not refuse. She would not refuse the ancient old being who sat crumpled before her, smothered and crushed by the weight of the burdens they had chosen to bear upon their withered shoulders. Instead, she did the one thing she could continue to do for him in these long, long nights. She raised her holophonor and began to play the one piece of music, the one tune from far-off and long-abandoned dusty Akhaten, that the Doctor loved so much. A piece of music he had once sung along to alongside his granddaughter, long deceased. A piece of music that had accompanied his defeat of a verifiable god in the annals of the cosmos, accompanied his saving of an entire localised cluster of stars and all who lived there.</p><p> </p><p>Selika began to sing, her voice forced to sound strong and firm despite the quaver that threatened to infect it.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Rest now…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The Doctor sighed a sigh weighed down by the death of ten thousand years.</p><p>It was finally here.</p><p>It had come.</p><p>The end of their days.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>My warrior…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It was supposed that most Time Lords lived approximately one thousand years for each regeneration they possessed, circumstances permitting. The Doctor felt differently, of course, but then the Doctor aged differently to most of their kindred. Where most of the Time Lords aged and died to be reborn upon the comfort of their homeworld, the member of their species called the Doctor died in battle and strife again and again; perhaps the most war-torn pacifist the universe had ever seen. Four hundred and fifty years spent in their first regeneration, so young and impetuous…</p><p> </p><p>Four hundred and fifty years.</p><p>What was such a span of decades to one such as the Doctor? Centuries, even.</p><p>Millennia? Perhaps.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Rest now…your hardship is over…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Twenty or more lives now where most of their kindred were still living their first regeneration cycle. Time Lords living, dying and living again endlessly upon Gallifrey’s umber soil.</p><p>The Doctor would have spat upon the ground, were he not conserving his energies for the dawn to come, the day of his final battle that would demand everything he had.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Live…wake up…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>It was all that the Doctor had left to take any pride in, pride that brought bitterly burning tears to their eyes and made their throat wrench to hold back the weeping until they could scarcely hold it back any more. Thoughts of a life so long that it was barely worth remembering in segments; simply years and decades bleeding together into one immense impossibly complex blurred sequence, as maddening and infuriating as it was hearts-breaking and invigorating to the one being who remembered it all.</p><p> </p><p>Reaching up with one wizened hand, the Doctor scratched his rough pepper-grey beard. He had not grown one since the darkest times of the Last Great Time War, when he had abandoned his name and his very identity to prevent the ruin of all existence at the hands of the Daleks.</p><p> </p><p>The Daleks.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wake up…and let the cloak of life…cling to your bones …</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>It was always the Daleks. They were doomed to face them almost since they had begun travelling the universe in their battered old TARDIS, and even now, it was the Daleks who were prepared to finally end their life. Twenty regenerations and more if you counted the offshoots…far too many lives and far too many years given in battle against the hateful spawn of Skaro.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Cling to your bones…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Bones.</p><p> </p><p>The Doctor didn’t feel like much more than bones these days. For almost nine hundred years he had persisted in the body of this incarnation, growing older and weaker, but never willing to stop. Centuries spent within this bitter cold asteroid field that dared to take the name Trenzalore from the annals of the future; centuries spent defending the many inhabitants of this barren rocky hellscape against the abominable half-creatures that had descended upon them in the name of prophecy.</p><p> </p><p>How could he not?</p><p> </p><p>It was his fault.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wake up…wake up…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He rose to his feet, ancient brown leather boots barely kept repaired feeling the rocky ground of his cavern hideaway beneath his soles. Selika watched but did not interrupt the song. She knew it was important.</p><p> </p><p>It was a rare day that the Doctor became introspective, a rare day that they dared to reflect.</p><p> </p><p>Selika did not interrupt. He had told the stories so many times over the centuries since coming to Trenzalore.</p><p> </p><p>Agonising death due to devastating radiation and advanced age around Mondas.</p><p>Forced death by the damnable High Council of the Time Lords for crimes undeserved.</p><p>Painful and drawn-out death caused by the crystals of Metebelis III.</p><p>Short and cruel demise, albeit prepared for, upon Logopolis.</p><p>Staggering across the dust and sands of Androzani Minor only to perish once more.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And let the cloak…of life…cling to your bones…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Avoidably slain during a time crash engineered by one of their oldest foes.</p><p>Shot dead as if it was a common burglary upon Earth in 1999.</p><p>Relinquishing his very own existence to defeat the Daleks once and for all.</p><p>Happily regenerating, for once, despite knowing he would never remember the circumstance.</p><p>Sacrificing himself within his own TARDIS to save the woman he loved.</p><p>Dying, heroically despite himself, to save one ordinary human.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wake up…wake up…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>His faithful TARDIS crashing down to Earth, forcing him to regenerate once more.</p><p>Fending off the Dalek armada threatening to exterminate a solar system, slain in the process.</p><p>Killed standing over Gallifrey’s ashes despite their disdain. She stood strong then.</p><p>Two regenerations in one, desperately striving to revive the TARDIS.</p><p>Allowing himself to die nobly in one final act to deny his darkest side their existence.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Live…wake up…wake up…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Killed in a freak accident but managing to bring the news of the Dalek return to the universe.</p><p>Brought down amidst the ruins of a far-future Earth, her soul shattered by losing so many.</p><p>Betrayed by his own people and assassinated to avert a prophecy.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And let the cloak…of life…cling to your bones…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>And after all that…the Doctor was here.</p><p>He pulled his heavy brown longcoat, worn and patchy with age, closer around himself to ward off the cold, peering out from the entrance of his cavern.</p><p>Selika sang her ancient song into the dark of the Trenzalore night.</p><p>The old blue police box at the mouth of the cave, utterly battered, its paint scarred and fading, its lights dimming, pulsed faintly, as if it was listening along with its most constant and enduring travel companion.</p><p>The Doctor leaned against the wall of the cave, old grey eyes looking out at a starfield as studded with bronze and brass saucers and far-off battleships as it was orbs of plasma and flame.</p><p>He sighed once again.</p><p> </p><p>One more day upon the battlefields of Trenzalore approached him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wake up…wake up…</em>
</p>
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